Month: February 2017

Resolving “Sorry this site hasn’t been shared with you…” SharePoint site error:

Alright .I’ve had a pretty tedious week with SharePoint search were all of sudden the “SharePoint Enterprise search “  site collection started throwing an error stating  “ Sorry this site hasn’t been shared with you “ as shown in the image below .

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Every time any user made an attempt to execute a search query on the search box in the SharePoint site , they got this annoying error stating the “ Sorry this site hasn’t been shared with you “ and it was the same for everyone .I tried  accessing  the Search center using the farm account and it still threw the same error . So in this article I’ll be taking about what this error is all about, what are the troubleshooting steps we did to fix and how we finally managed to fix it.

Initial troubleshooting steps performed to fix this issue:

Since this was on PROD and we had a lot of users who were impacted by this issue and hence we initially decided to create a new search center site collection under a different web application so that for the time being users can live with that .Meaning , we initially had the “SharePoint enterprise search center “ URL  configured and running under web application A and after we encountered this issue we removed that and created a new enterprise search center site collection under web application B so that we can figure out what’s wrong with the previous search center without having any business impact . The image below should help you understand what I’m talking about.

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After making the change here, please go ahead and update the new search center URL in site settings as shown in the image below.

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So after doing that we did the below mentioned steps in sequential manner as suggested in some forums to get rid of the issue….

  1. We thought of clearing IE cache: Open a new browser window –> Go to Internet options –>In the general tab, click the Delete button –>Make sure that passwords and temporary Internet files are selected. Try different browser such as Firefox! ( But doing this wouldn’t make sense in our scenario as the issue was only limited to one site collection in the entire farm .However , we tried this but it didn’t help )
  2. If you didn’t run product and configuration wizard after installation/patch, you may get this error even if you are a site collection administrator. Run it once and get rid of this issue. ( Even this was not quite convincing as the issue was just with one site collection( i.e. SharePoint enterprise search ) in the farm )
  3. Stop and Start “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application” service from Central Admin –>Application Management–> Manage services on server ( We did try this as well bearing the risk of losing all the sites for quite some time but even that didn’t help .For those who are not aware of what this steps does , it stops and recreates the SharePoint web application sites in IIS )
  4. If the SharePoint farm was migrated from SharePoint 2010, or backup-restore/import-exported: If your source site collection is in classic windows authentication mode and target is in claims authentication, you must change classic mode authentication to claims-based authentication. ( This was not applicable in our case as the sites were working perfectly fine for years after the migration )
  5. Try clearing the Distribution Cache. Do the IIS reset (We did this and it didn’t help either).

6. We also verified whether “NT Authority\Authenticated users” group has enough permissions on the search center and it was positive.

7. Of course we also checked the site collection administrators for the “SharePoint Enterprise Search site collection “and it was perfectly fine.

8. We also took a look at all the Search service application in SharePoint 2013 to verify the settings and they were pretty good.

Also, let me tell you that the issue this issue was reported to us the second time within a month .The first time it was with a different site collection on the same web application and this time it was on the SharePoint search center site collection that’s under the same web application. When it was reported the first time we just did an app pool recycle and also checked out and checked in the master page and that fixed it .But this time nothing was accessible in the Search center site collection.

So finally with no much steps left to do we decided to open a Sev A case with Microsoft and started working with them on this issue.

Listed below is what MS did to fix the issue:

  1. I shared the ULS logs as well as fiddler logs with the MS engineer by reproducing the error and after reviewing the logs he was able to identity that the “super user “ and “super reader “ account which takes care of object cache got corrupted in our environment which lead to this outage .

What’s the super user and super reader account?

The below mentioned link should give you a detailed explanation on the super user and super reader account. It’s very important that any SharePoint environment should have these accounts configured properly for optimal performance and it’s mostly utilized by sites which have the publishing feature enabled.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758656.aspx

Ideally, the Portal Super User account must be an account that has Full Control access to the web application and the Portal Super Reader account must be an account that has Full Read access to the web application.

Also, you need to make sure that these accounts are discrete and they should never be used to login to the site and also it shouldn’t be used to to login to the SharePoint servers also as mentioned in the TechNet article that I highlighted above.

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But in our scenario it’s exactly that part which was wrong .The “super user” and “super reader” account was the farm administrator service account and we often use that account for accessing the sites .This was configured mistakenly when the farm was initially configured and it eventually got corrupted which lead to this outage .However, we were not able to identify how it got corrupted all of a sudden and how it managed to run safely for all these years( might be one of those SharePoint mysteries ) . So we went ahead and changed that account and updated that for all the web applications in the farm using the below mentioned PowerShell command

$wa = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity “<WebApplication>”

$wa.Properties[“portalsuperuseraccount”] = “<SuperUser>”

$wa.Properties[“portalsuperreaderaccount”] = “<SuperReader>”

$wa.Update()

Lessons learned:

Please ensure that your SharePoint farm has the “super user” and “super reader” configured correctly for optimal performance and do check and ensure that they are discrete and those accounts are not being used to access SharePoint sites . If by any chance you’re facing this issue for a different site collection and not for SharePoint search the steps which I discussed above would still remain the same except for the “SharePoint search” part.

Also once you’re done reading this post, please ensure that you take a closer look at your web application properties and ensure that these accounts are configured correctly so that you don’t end up seeing surprises like me.Adding these accounts will also kick start a search full crawl .

Thanks for reading this post ….I hope this will help you fix this issue if you happen to come across this in your environment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/110417/sorry-this-site-hasnt-been-shared-with-you-when-trying-to-access-mysite

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Microsoft Teams in Office 365

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I hope everyone would agree to the fact that Office 365 has been one among the best products Microsoft has delivered till date and it’s good to see Microsoft adding a lot of new features and functionalities to the Office 365 suite every now and then. Today many organizations have started choosing Office 365 over on-premises Microsoft products as they’re easy to use and manage and in addition to that you get to remain up to date with all the latest updates.

  1. SharePoint provides intranets and content management solutions to more than 200,000 organizations and 190 million people.
  2. Yammer is the social network for work, enabling cross-company discussions for 85 percent of the Fortune 500.
  3. Skype for Business provides real-time voice, video and conferencing and hosts more than 100 million meetings a month.
  4. Office 365 Groups is our cross-application membership service that makes it easy for people to move naturally from one collaboration tool to another.

Today in this article, we will be discussing about “Microsoft Teams “, the new chat-based workspace in Office 365 that has built-in access to SharePoint Online, OneNote & Skype for Business Online. It was recently introduced by Microsoft couple of months back and acts as a hub for team chats, calls, meetings, and private messages.

Microsoft Teams mainly focuses on these four areas ….

  1. Chat for today’s teams
  2. A hub for teamwork
  3. Customizable for each team
  4. Security teams trust

Let’s look on all these areas and understand how Microsoft teams is built to support all these four areas that can enhance business as well as user experience.

  1. Chat for today’s teams:

It provides a modern conversation experience for today’s teams. Microsoft Teams supports not only persistent but also threaded chats to keep everyone engaged. Team conversations are, by default, visible to the entire team, but there is of course the ability for private discussions. Skype is deeply integrated, so teams can participate in voice and video conferences. You can also add emoji’s, stickers, GIFs and custom memes to make it their own.

  1. A hub for teamwork:

Microsoft Teams is built on Office 365 Groups and is backed by Microsoft Graph. So, it brings together the full breadth and depth of Office 365 to provide a true hub for teamwork. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneNote, Planner, Power BI and Delve are all built into Microsoft Teams so people have all the information and tools they need at their fingertips.

  1. Customizable for each team:

Since all teams are unique, Microsoft has invested deeply in ways for people to customize their workspace, with rich extensibility and open APIs available at general availability. For example, Tabs provides quick access to frequently used documents and cloud services. Microsoft Teams also shares the same Connector model as Exchange, providing notifications and updates from third-party services like Twitter or GitHub. In addition to that Microsoft has also included full support for the Microsoft Bot Framework to bring intelligent first- and third-party services into your team environment

  1. Security teams trust:

Microsoft Teams is designed in such a manner that it provides the advanced security and compliance capabilities that our Office 365 customers expect. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Like all other commercial services, Microsoft has implemented a transparent operational model with no standing access to customer data. Microsoft Teams will support key compliance standards including EU Model Clauses, ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA and more. In addition to that, Microsoft Teams is served out of our hyper-scale global network of data centers, automatically provisioned within Office 365 and managed centrally, just as any other Office 365 service.

Availability of Microsoft Teams:

As of now Microsoft Teams is on preview mode and its general availability details can be found below.

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Subscription details for Microsoft Teams:

If you have a personal Office 365 subscription, you won’t be able to access Microsoft Teams. To access the app, you need one of the following Office 365 license plans:

  1. Business Essentials
  2. Business Premium
  3. Enterprise E1, E3, or E5
  4. Enterprise E4 (for anyone who purchased this plan prior to its retirement)

Note: If you’re licensed for a suite plan like Office 365 Education or a non-suite plan like Skype for Business Online Plan 2, then you won’t be able to get the app. You need to change your license or purchase additional licenses for your company.

Alright, I guess we have now see enough about Microsoft teams. So, let’s see how to enable this in your Office 365 tenant so that your end users in your organization can start using this.

Note: I’ve chosen India in the county field while signing up for Office 365 and I’m able to see Microsoft teams in my tenant. If you’re not seeing that in your tenant it could be because you’re choosing a country where this feature is not available yet.

Turning on Microsoft teams in Office 365 tenant:

  1. Sign in to Office 365 with your work or school account.
  2. Go to the Office 365 admin center as shown in the image below and click on the app launcher. You can optionally click on “Admin” option as shown below.

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3. Click on “Admin” as shown in the image below.

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4. Navigate to Settings and click on “Services & add-ins” as shown below.

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5. On the Services & add-ins home page, choose Microsoft Teams as shown in the image below.

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6. On the Microsoft Teams settings page that opens, click or tap to switch the toggle to the on position to turn on Teams for your organization, and then choose Save.Once you’re done you will be redirected to the Microsoft teams home page as shown in the image below and this where you need to enable the features specific to Microsoft teams.

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7. On the Microsoft Teams settings page, in the General section, you can choose if you want to show an organization chart in user profiles. By default, this setting is turned on. To change this setting, click or tap to switch the toggle next to Show organization chart in personal profile to Off or On, and then choose Save.

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8. In the Teams & Channel section you can manage team owners and members by using the Groups control panel in the Office 365 admin center portal. At this time, you cannot create teams from the Groups control panel – teams must be created by using the Microsoft Teams desktop client or web app which we will be discussing later in his article.

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9. In the Calls & Meetings section, you can choose if users can use video and screen sharing during calls and meetings as shown in the image below.

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10. In the Messaging section, you can turn on or turn off media content such as animated images, memes, and stickers etc.

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Note: To turn on or turn off animated images, click or tap the toggle switch next to Add fun animated images to the conversations, and then choose Save. When animated images are turned on, you can apply a content rating to restrict the type of animated images that can be displayed in conversations. You can set the Content Rating to be one of the following:

  1. Strict
  2. Moderate
  3. No restriction

To turn on or turn off custom memes, click or tap the toggle switch next to Add customizable images from the Internet, and then choose Save.

To turn on or turn off stickers, click or tap the toggle switch next to Add editable images to the conversations, and then choose Save.

  1. The Tabs section, let you customize a channel to include content and capabilities your team needs every day. They provide quick access to frequently used documents and cloud services. In the preview release, there are several built-in tabs such as Files and Notes. In the Microsoft Teams client, at the top of the channel, users can add tabs for Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, OneNote notebooks, Power BI reports, and plans from Planner.
  2. You can turn on Tabs as shown in the image below.

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Please check the Tabs section in my “Microsoft teams” desktop client below.

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13. Finally, you can enable Bots as shown in the image below

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Note: Using Bots, Microsoft Teams users can complete tasks such as querying information and performing commands by using bots. Users can also integrate your existing LOB applications with Microsoft Teams by using a bot.

To prevent or allow side-loading of proprietary bots, click or tap to switch the toggle next to Enable side loading of external Bots, and then choose Save.

Finally, once all the features are enabled this is how the Microsoft teams home page will look like…

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Point to Note:

Although the Office 365 Global administrator has turned on this feature in the tenant end users may not see the Microsoft Teams app tile in the app launcher after an admin turns on Microsoft Teams for an organization. Admins can direct end users to go to https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads to get the desktop apps. To access the web client, users can go to https://teams.microsoft.com. For mobile apps, go to the relevant mobile store for Google Play, Apple App Store, and Microsoft Store.

Desktop client for Microsoft teams:

The below mentioned image depicts the desktop client for Microsoft teams using which I can create my team. You can do the same using web client as well.

Desktop client for Microsoft teams:

You need to sign in with your Office 365 credentials in the desktop client.

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Web client for Microsoft teams:

You can check the web client below which opens on a browser and you can also notice that I’ve created my team in the image below.

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Creating a team:

You need to use the Create Team on the bottom left of your screen as shown in the image below to create teams. In addition to you also have a “settings” option on the left corner which can help you turn on and off certain features.

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Conversations in Microsoft Teams:

You can notice some conversations happening between the users in my team in the image below. You can mention a user, reply to a message and like a conversation or a reply.

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In addition to that as mentioned earlier, you can add emoji’s to your conversations, attach files and also use the video camera icon to create new video meetings.

Adding a Tab:

Finally, you can add tabs using the “+” symbol as shown in the image below to add documents & One Note files to your conversations. You can notice that I’ve added a One Note file to my conversations in the image below

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Microsoft teams is truly phenomenal and is a great way for users to communicate within themselves in a team . Please turn this on for your users so that they can enjoy this great application.

Thanks for reading this post …. Good luck with Microsoft teams in Office 365!!!

First Release in Office 365:

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In this article, I’ll  will be discussing about “First Release in Office 365 “using which you can manage how your organization receive the regular updates from Microsoft for Office 365. Now, it’s a known fact that unlike on-premises the updates for Office 365 are pushed regularly and using this new feature in Office 365 you can designate that only certain individuals receive the updates first before it’s made generally available to everyone in the organization. By doing so you have ample amount of time to test these updates and check whether it breaks something (i.e. may be some custom functionalities) or you can remain on the default release schedule and receive the updates later.

So, to put it in simple words, ““First Release” update for Office 365 allows you to get access to updates faster than GA (General Availability) “.

Now, before we look on how to enable this feature in your Office 365 tenant, let’s take a look on the two type of release options.

  1. Standard Release
  2. First Release

Standard Release:

This is the default option where you and your users receive the latest updates when they’re released broadly to all Office 365 customers. This gives you extra time to prepare your support staff and users for upcoming changes. This is how Microsoft puts it:

“You and your users receive a select set of significant service updates 3 weeks or more after the official announcement. For at least 3 weeks, you have time to learn about the updates and prepare your employees.”

First Release:

With this option, you and your users can be the first to see the latest updates and help shape the product by providing early feedback. You can choose to have individuals or the entire organization receive updates early. This is how Microsoft puts it:

“You and your users receive a select set of significant service updates as early as one week after the official announcement. Choose this option if you and your employees are comfortable with regular updates to the Office 365 service.”

However, the default is to remain with “Standard Release”, which means that new functionality is released to your tenant when it’s good and ready.

The image depicted below gives a detailed explanation on the Office 365 release cycle:

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So, as we’re done explaining what’s First release in Office 365, let’s look on how to enable that in your tenant. Remember, by default your tenant will be on “Standard Release “mode  and you need to enable “First Release “option.

Note: The Office 365 updates described in this article apply to Office 365, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online. They do not apply to Skype for Business and related services.

Steps to activate First Release in your Office 365 Tenant:

  1. Sign in to Office 365 with your work or school account.
  2. Go to the Office 365 admin center as shown in the image below and click on the app launcher. You can optionally click on “Admin” option as shown below.

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3. Click on “Admin” as shown in the image below.

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4. Navigate to Settings and click on Organization profile as shown below.

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5. Once you’re on the Organization profile page you will see the “Release preference “option as shown in the image below. Please click the “edit” button to the change the settings for Release preference.

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6. You will notice 3 options as shown in the image below.

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7. Choose the option that best suits your need, I’m choosing the third option as I want to enable First release option only for selected users.

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8. On the next screen where it asks for a confirmation, please select Yes.

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9. On the next screen, you will be asked to add people for First release as shown below.

 

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10. Please select users from the list of available users as shown in the image below. I’m choosing myself here. You can also search for a user in the search box.

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11. Once done you will see an option which says your release preference has been updated.

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12. Once you click on close you can check & verify the list of users subscribed for first release. Here in this case you can see my name.

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13. Finally, you can check the Organization profile home page to verify the release preference settings.

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This confirms that you I have turned on “First preference “for myself alone. The best practice is to enable this for power users or IT administrators so that they can check the features before it’s made generally available for all end users. However, it’s up to you on how you want to manage this for your users .

Thanks for reading this post …. Good luck with Office 365!!!!

 

PowerShell script to configure SQL Server Reporting Services in SharePoint mode

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The below mentioned script will take care of the steps listed below :

  1. Installs Reporting Services service and service proxy, and starts the service.2
  2. Creates a service proxy named “Reporting Services”.
  3. Creates a Reporting Services service application named “Reporting Services Application”.
  4. Enables the Power View feature for a site collection.

 

#Script for SSRS Configuration in SharePoint Integrated mode

$starttime=Get-Date
write-host -foregroundcolor DarkGray StartTime>> $starttime

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Import the SharePoint PowerShell snappin”
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Sharepoint.Powershell –EA 0

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Install SSRS Service and Service Proxy, and start the service”
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>”

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Install the Reporting Services Shared Service”
Install-SPRSService

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green ” Install the Reporting Services Service Proxy”
Install-SPRSServiceProxy

# Get the ID of the RS Service Instance and start the service
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Start the Reporting Services Service”
$RS = Get-SPServiceInstance | Where {$_.TypeName -eq “SQL Server Reporting Services Service”}
Start-SPServiceInstance -Identity $RS.Id.ToString()

# Wait for the Reporting Services Service to start…
$Status = Get-SPServiceInstance $RS.Id.ToString()
While ($Status.Status -ne “Online”)
{
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “SSRS Service Not Online…Current Status = ” $Status.Status
Start-Sleep -Seconds 2
$Status = Get-SPServiceInstance $RS.Id.ToString()
}

$time=Get-Date
write-host -foregroundcolor DarkGray StartTime>> $starttime
write-host -foregroundcolor DarkGray $time

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Create a new application pool and Reporting Services service application”
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>”
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Create a new application pool”
#!!!! update “-Account” with an existing Managed Service Account
New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name “Reporting Services” -Account “<domain>\User name>”
$appPool = Get-SPServiceApplicationPool “Reporting Services”

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green ” Create the Reporting Services Service Application”
#!!!! Update “-DatabaseServer”, an instance of the SQL Server database engine
$rsService = New-SPRSServiceApplication -Name “Reporting Services Application” -ApplicationPool $appPool -DatabaseName “Reporting_Services_Application” -DatabaseServer “<server name>”

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Create the Reporting Services Service Application Proxy”
$rsServiceProxy = New-SPRSServiceApplicationProxy -Name “Reporting Services Application Proxy” -ServiceApplication $rsService

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Associate service application proxy to default web site and grant web applications rights to SSRS application pool”
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>”
# Associate the Reporting Services Service Applicatoin Proxy to the default web site…
Get-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroup -default | Add-SPServiceApplicationProxyGroupMember -Member $rsServiceProxy

$time=Get-Date
write-host -foregroundcolor DarkGray StartTime>> $starttime
write-host -foregroundcolor DarkGray $time

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Enable the PowerView and reportserver site features”
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>”
#!!!! update “-url” of the site where you want the features enabled
Enable-SPfeature -identity “powerview” -Url http://server/sites/bi
Enable-SPfeature -identity “reportserver” -Url http://server/sites/bi

####To Verify, you can run the following:
#Get-SPRSServiceApplication
#Get-SPServiceApplicationPool | where {$_.name -like “reporting*”}
#Get-SPRSServiceApplicationProxy

List of build numbers required to upgrade to the next on-premises version of SharePoint:

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I guess it’s very important to check and ensure that your existing environment is running a version of SharePoint that can be upgraded to the next version while you’re planning for a SharePoint upgrade.

So keeping that in mind, I’ve prepared a list of the build numbers for various SharePoint versions that should help in planning the upgrade.

  • To upgrade from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, your SharePoint 2007 farm should be on this build number–> ( i.e. SharePoint 2007 SP2, build number (12.0.6421.1000) )
  • To upgrade from SharePoint 2010 to 2013, your SharePoint 2010 farm should be on this build number–> ( SharePoint 2010 SP1, build number (14.0.6029.1000) )
  • To upgrade from SharePoint Server 2013 to 2016, your SharePoint 2013 farm should be on this build number–>( SharePoint Server 2013 SP1 + March 2013 PU, build number (15.0.4481.1005) )

 Note: Also, please ensure that you fix the errors in the current environment itself before you upgrade to the next version as the errors will not be fixed once you upgrade to the next version of SharePoint. An error in SharePoint is an error on all the versions and just upgrading it won’t fix it.

Upgrade Methods to the next on-premises version of SharePoint:

The tabular column below should help you in choosing the right upgrade method if you’re planning to move to the next on-premises version

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Thanks for reading this post .Happy SharePointing!!!